The concept is to incorporate a single tomato seed (or other such seed) into a drop of gel as the drop is forming. The drop of gel, with the seed inside, then falls into a bath of a chemical which fixes or sets the gel.
An object of the invention is to provide accurate encapsulation of seeds.
Another object is to achieve encapsulation speeds enabling a group of drop-forming units with the ability to produce encapsulated seeds at a steady state rate, such as 540,000 per eight hours, allowing for normal maintenance and repairs.
Another object of the invention is to provide seed encapsulations that are approximately spherical and are uniform and consistent, with volumes of about 80 microliter per capsule.
Another object is to hold the number of faulty encapsulations, i.e., those that fail to contain a seed, down to less than 0.2% of the total encapsulations.
An additional object is to hold the occurrence of crushed or broken seeds attributable to the machine to less than 0.2%.
A further object is to pass to the gel fixative only gel capsules that incorporate a seed, deflecting the empty gel capsules for possible re-use while avoiding their mingling with the seed-containing capsules.
Another object is to count accurately both the good and bad capsules.